First use in anger

I've been using ISR and True Image together for about two years now, and yesterday was the first time I had to use them in real disaster recovery circumstances.

I had had reason to try and recover from an Acronis True Image on a server a couple of years ago, but that didn't go well at all. Possibly because it was True Image 7, with a RAIDed server. But that wasn't my system, I hadn't set it up or tested it.

Here's what happened:

I trashed my operating system -- kernel or system file had disappeared, so I tried to do a Windows CD rescue (I didn't have a recent online copy of my primary partition, though I did have data, offline snapshots and Acronis Images on another internal disk.)

Big mistake.

Windows overwrote my mbr, started asking me for other drivers that I don't have to hand (because I've got the builders in -- don't ask) and then my wireless keyboard and mouse would just stop functioning half way through.

A quick boot into Bart PE to back up my data just to be certain, and then a True Image recovery, followed by restore of my off-line snapshots via ISR, and then recovery of my data files via True Image incremental mode, and I was back where I was a few hours earlier. Doing this manually would have taken me at least a couple of days.

flimbag,
If I read this well, it sounds to me, that Acronis True Image let you down, not FirstDefense-ISR.
In your case I would be also very angry, but I don't understand why you post this in the FirstDefense-ISR forums and not in the Acronis forums.
We talk sometimes about Image Backup softwares, because they have to recover FDISR-snapshots as well, but problems with ATI itself are discussed in the Acronis Forums.

Regarding Image Backup softwares in general :
Never use an Image Backup software, unless you tested the RESTORATION thoroughly. People usually backup, backup, backup and that's it. They never test the restoration and then suddenly some disaster happens and then they try to restore for the first time and then it fails. That's the wrong method. If the backup works properly, doesn't mean, that the restoration will work properly too.

I also use ATI and the first three months I took any opportunity even without reason to restore my computer completely and it never failed. I'm a very lucky ATI-user, considering the problems in the Acronis forums, which I never had since I bought ATI in march 2006.
Nevertheless I'm planning to replace ATI v9 with ShadowProtect v3.0, because ATI v10 is the beginning of bloatware and because Acronis doesn't solve old problems in next releases, they only add new (useless) features.
This is a bad evolution and my conclusion is that Acronis has a bad computer department. I don't mind errors of analysts and programmers, but they have to correct them and that doesn't happen at Acronis. Even the minor errors aren't fixed yet. Upgrading to ATI v10 will cost me $30, another $40 extra and I have ShadowProtect Desktop v3.0, which isn't available yet, but that's a matter of time. Some users decide to keep on using an older version of ATI, but you can't do this forever.
If I was you I would go for another Image Backup software.

I have to agree with Erik about test restoring. My total confidence in ShadowProtect comes from all the restores I've done under different conditions, and it has always worked perfectly. Version 3.0 is going to be a jewel.

I also agree that for me when I've use ATI v9 it has worked although little things are quirky so I don't have the same confidence. Like wise I feel they have turn v10 into bloatware.

I use both Acronis TI 10 ( since version 6) and FD-ISR and think they are both great. Following comments about Shadow Protect I took a quick look and can not see what might make it a killer app for me. I'm not interested in incremental, differential, scheduling etc just basic reliable imaging and useful snapshots.
what exactly is Shadow Protect 3.0 going to bring to the party that I might really need ?